Tag Archives: anna dressed in blood

Notes on Diversity:
There is a sliver of diversity here, but it’s probably not what you’re looking for.

The Jewish character is smart, but Very Wrong and Stubborn.

Literally the only person of color in the entire book is a voodoo-using evil bogeyman ghost out to kill people. He is Black. And evil. And he eats animals sometimes.

Review:
Cas Lowood is a ghost hunter, like his father before. He is training, honing the edge of his talents, because he needs to be as good as possible when he goes up against the ghost that took down his dad. He’s only seventeen, but he’s been at this for three years, and he’s nearly ready. This next hunt is his final test: Anna Dressed In Blood. She’s supposed to be vicious. The stories about her are chilling. He can’t wait to go after her.

But when he gets to Thunder Bay Ontario–with his witch mother and their witchy cat in tow–nothing goes according to plan. Anna is a force, and deadly, but there is more to her than he expected. Civilians get involved, and it turns out he needs their help. And then everything goes sideways.

Anna Dressed In Blood is a well-written book that, for me, had several fatal flaws and suffered in comparison to other, better works tackling similar themes. Blake can write, and she has a knack for characterization. The book was well-paced and readable, the characters are generally well-rounded. Carmel, especially, surprises and delights. Blake has talents; this book was not the book for me.

The premise (extremely masculine but very sensitive teenage boy goes ghost-huntin’) bore such a strong resemblance, especially in the opening pages, that I couldn’t help comparing it to Supernatural.

Supernatural has a lot of problems–the women keep dying. The people of color keep dying. But as a show that explores just how toxic masculinity can be it is pretty damn good. This is clearly a theme Blake was trying to explore in Anna Dressed In Blood; as Cas slowly picks up his entourage, and even more slowly begins to regard them as friends, he opens up new vulnerabilities.

The difference between Cas Lowood and the Winchester brothers is that Cas never actually had to do any of the things he’s doing. He decided to put this pressure on himself. We are told, in the book, that he is very special and must fight all these ghosts with his very special ghost hunting knife to which–maybe, it remains unclear–he is blood-bound. But his mother clearly wishes he wouldn’t do this, even as she enables him.

(Sidebar: Dear Cas’s mom–stop enabling him. Why are you enabling him? Since he was fourteen he has been doing this shit that got your husband killed? You’re just…letting him do this? What the shit, you’re a witch. And a parent. Put your foot down. Do not move him around multiple countries allowing him to murder dead people, which is clearly very dangerous. It is well-established that John Winchester was a shitty parent do you want to be like John Winchester, lady??)

Dean and Sam were forced into this life. They had no choice. There was no normalcy for them, and on top of that, they are not in high school. Watching the show, I do have to navigate around questions like really, though, when do you do your homework if you are out ghost hunting all night. And, having been forced into that life, the Winchesters’ emotional arcs are more defined and starker than Cas’s.

Then it turns out it’s less a Gory Horrible ghost story than this kind of ghost story:

but gender flipped and they’re in high school

Yeah. The kind with kissin’.

I mean, Anna is still pretty destructive, but not when it comes to Cas1. He uncovers her Tragic Past (of course she has a Tragic Past) and then promptly falls in love with her. And she likes him back. And they canoodle and stuff. And…all his friends and his mom are cool with it.

Why are they cool with it? How is this a sustainable relationship? Things Go Down at the end, but things would go down one way or the other. Did Cas see himself as a seventy year old man with ghost-Anna on his arm? Was he planning to introduce her to people? What if she was tied to the town–was he going to leave and return occasionally? Just…no one brought up any “hey, friend, your girlfriend is a ghost, that is an interesting life choice” conversations at all.

This part of the book really pales in comparison to Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria. Like Cas, Jevick falls for a ghost. Unlike Cas, he realized very quickly how limiting their different experiences of existence are for their budding relationship. It’s a beautiful, bittersweet portrayal of love. If you are looking for a love story about a man and a ghost, that’s what I would point you to. But it’s an extraordinarily different book than this one (not horror at all, for starters).

With all of this I doubt I ever would have become an Anna Dressed in Blood superfan, but I would have rated it a solid four stars had there not been a few glaring plot holes and dangling plot threads. The worldbuilding felt half fleshed out. The plot moved–but on inspection key pieces just happened and didn’t make much sense. Anna’s murder, especially made little sense to me (specific questions are spoilery and under a cut here). Same with the final Big Bad.

1For reasons that are never really explained. Plot threads be hangin’.

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Pronouns: they/them/their. B R Sanders is a white, genderqueer writer who lives and works in Denver, CO, with their family and two cats. B writes about queer elves, mostly, as featured in their two novels, the award-winning ARIAH and their debut novel RESISTANCE, both of which are set in the same universe. They love drinking coffee and sleeping, but alas, drinking coffee makes it hard to sleep. Stay in touch with B on twitter (@B_R_Sanders) or with their newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bgYFjf